While major Big Box retailers have struggled to keep pace with consumer-driven demands for instant gratification, Sears Holdings has come up with new innovations to anticipate and serve shoppers with a new one-day ground delivery service supported by a dynamic DC network.

When an industry is changing rapidly, companies must adapt in order to survive. In this whitepaper, a global publisher was seeking a partner that could mitigate risk and build a platform flexible enough for their shifting customer expectations. The solution enabled the company to rewrite their operations game plan and transform their supply chain.

Join our panel of leading economic and transportation analysts as they share their exclusive insight on where rates are headed and the issues that will be driving those rate increases over the next 12 months.

Following nine months of order backlogs for Class 8 trucks, June saw a less than 1 percent decrease, according to data from ACT Research, a provider of data and analysis for trucks and other commercial vehicles.

This marked the second consecutive month of slower order activity, according to ACT, with net orders hitting 21,266 units on a non-seasonal basis, which was 9 percent lower than May’s output. This data was featured in ACT’s most recent State of the Industry report.

“Despite the slowing in new order activity over the last couple of months, it is important to note that the industry backlog continues to be very solid,” said Kenny Vieth, president and senior analyst at ACT, in a statement. “Cancellations continue to be very low, an indication of the quality of the orders currently booked at the OEMs.”

This decline continues a slowdown that has been occurring since a big order intake in April, caused by some artificial things that were starting to pull demand ahead, said Steve Tam, vice president-commercial sector at ACT, in an interview. Among these “artificial” things are signals from truck OEMs that price increases for parts and components is coming, with discounting starting to cease as pricing is returning their way.

These things all manifested themselves in the form of some type of a price increase, with truckers looking to buy equipment doing so in April, according to Tam.

“Truckers are creatures of habit so their capital investment cycle follows a fairly predictable pattern, which helps us gauge what is going on,” said Tam. “We can expect to see orders remain down at this lower level through at least September and probably October.”

About the Author

Jeff BermanGroup News Editor

Jeff Berman is Group News Editor for Logistics Management, Modern Materials Handling, and Supply Chain Management Review. Jeff works and lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, where he covers all aspects of the supply chain, logistics, freight transportation, and materials handling sectors on a daily basis. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

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